16/03/2007

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

Die Welt 16.03.2007

WriterMichael Kleeberg is relieved at Jacques Chirac's departure from French politics: "Our clichee of the typical Frenchman is a philosophising bohemian type with a filterless cigarette hanging from his lips. But in fact a much more typical, and much more common, species is the French petty-bourgeois square. He's someone with roots in the countryside, and that's where he feels most at home. He eats and drinks and likes to gripe. When he can get away with it, he cheats on his wife. He mistrusts foreigners, he's a tad gutless and rather racist, but he's proud of making it through the day and of cheating the accursed state where he can. In the 50s and 60s, Bourvil and Louis de Funes gave faces to his naivety and cynicism. In his successful presidential campaign of 1995 and thereafter, particularly during the football World Cup in 1998, Jacques Chirac styled himself as France's ideal all-round player. Perhaps it was an unimposing role, but it led to success."

Frankfurter Rundschau 16.03.2007

Arno Widmann comments on the surveillance reports filed on Milan Kundera during the communist era, which have now been made publicly accessible. "Up to 13 spelling mistakes have been found in as few as seven lines. And the agents reporting on Kundera were clearly subjected to the problems widely faced in all socialist countries. Once an observation came to an abrupt end when Kundera passed a garbage truck in his small car and the Prague agents remained stuck behind it in their spacious grey Volga. The reports document meticulously that Kundera ordered 100 grams of Russian salad, and that his wife purchased two sausages at the butcher's on Myslikova Street. But they give no idea at all about what was going on in Milan Kundera's mind at this crucial time. The powers that be only knew - or suspected - that he was an enemy. And there they were right."

Süddeutsche Zeitung 16.03.2007

Swedish writerPer Olov Enquist asks what to do about all the "altjungs" (old boys): bachelors, most of them farmers in northern Sweden, who are waiting in vain for a woman to come along. "The principle of strong woman continues to lie over this country like a nocturnal fog over a swamp. But most of these dominant women move away, and men look for them from a position of inferiority. In conversations between the genders, there's a tone of astonished bitterness. The 'old boys' quickly realise how hopeless their situation is: there are few available women in their area, which is transparent in an unpleasant way."

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 16.03.2007

Paul Schindl is impressed by the heroism with which Austrians are defending the particularity of their German before EU bodies and in the translation committees. "There was major unrest in an EU plenum when an Austrian bureaucrat said that illegal border-crossers in his homeland were being 'trod upon' (betreten). There resulted half an hour of tumult that stemmed from a concern that human rights in Austria were literally being walked all over. The case was solved: when someone is 'trod upon,' he is 'caught' (ertappt)."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 16.03.2007

Historians Jörg Baberowski and Anselm Doering-Manteuffel believe strongly that National Socialism should indeed be compared to Stalinism. "In the 'Historikerstreit' (historian's dispute), no comparisons were drawn. That's because German historians hadn't the slightest clue about Eastern European history, and that of the Soviet Union in particular. Indeed, after the archives were opened and Eastern Europe returned to European memory, something changed. Now it's becoming clearer that these regimes had very similar challenges and similar mechanisms of force. We described it as a striving for order, for clarity. Both regimes used similar techniques of murder to overcome the problems of their own making. In this sense, new insights can be gained from this comparison."

"Actors, bit parts, Vienese, lend me your ears! I come to praise Shakespeare, not to bury him. You've already seen to that. The revolving stage has turned, it's true. And director Falk Richter has projected sundry videos through its cracks. And Richter is an honourable sponge (who sucks up what he can). But that you stalk around the Burgtheater in your department store suits like branch managers at a bank conference in St. Pölten, and plunge knives into the district manager, the charming Mr. Simonischek, then call him 'Ceasar' to boot, and yourselves 'Romans'... on this very Ides of March, all that shows that Shakespeare's died in March. And you are his gravediggers." Thus comments Gerhard Stadelmaier Wednesday's premiere of Falk Richter's "Julius Ceasar" at the Burgtheater in Vienna.

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K. read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.read more

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talksâ¬Ã¡â¬Ã¡ about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.read more

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.read more

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.read more

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west.Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.read more

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatifiedPope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.read more

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.read more

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.read more

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.read more

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not surethat Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.read more

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.read more

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin'sincendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class. read more